


foolish if i don't rush in

by elizajumel



Category: 18th Century CE RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:13:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24597295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajumel/pseuds/elizajumel
Summary: Aaron shakes his head, abruptly charmed. “No one interrupts me as much as you do.”“I do not interrupt you for the sake of interruption. I finish your sentences because I know what you are going to say,” Theodosia retorts, her smile growing smug. “There is a difference.”
Relationships: Aaron Burr/Theodosia Prevost Burr
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	foolish if i don't rush in

“They say you are courting my sister.”

Aaron’s head snaps up from the desk. “Who says that?”

“The Livingston girls,” Theodosia responds, leaning back in the chair across from him. “They say you must be _positively infatuated_ , to be coming around the Hermitage so often.”

He can’t help but smile at the way her voice slants upward, mocking, as she quotes from the letter in her hand. Theodosia is so rarely derisive or petty—her finest form, he thinks. “Am I, now?”

“ _Are_ you?” Theodosia says archly.

Aaron sets his quill down and looks at her. “Not with your sister.”

Theodosia holds his gaze. Aaron scans her face for any visible reaction or betrayed sentiment and finds none. The silence extends, and he fights the urge to speak again first—to apologize for the audacity of his words. Or bolt from the room, never to return to the Hermitage.

Finally, Theodosia’s lip twitches upwards. Aaron lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Perhaps we let them think what they will.”

It’s the last thing he’s expecting her to say. “You _want_ them to think—”

“Well, it would explain why you are here all the time,” Theodosia says evenly. “She is young, yet unmarried, and beautiful. It is the most natural explanation anyone would come up with. I don’t see why we should pierce the illusion.”

“Theo, you know I feel about—”

“Letting others take liberties with your personal life, yes.”

Aaron shakes his head, abruptly charmed. “No one interrupts me as much as you do.”

“I do not interrupt you for the sake of interruption. I finish your sentences because I know what you are going to say,” Theodosia retorts, her smile growing smug. “There is a difference.”

Aaron grins back at her, feeling bold again. “You see? You never fail to challenge me. You always know my sentiments, and express them better than I could myself. Everything you say and think interests me.”

He so enjoys the minute mechanics of her faltering composure as he talks: brow creasing, lips parting slightly in surprise. “Not everything, surely,” she says at length.

“Everything,” Aaron says.

Her mouth closes, then folds into a flat line. “What do you think of my proposal, then?”

Aaron considers, speaking slowly. “You know I dislike dishonesty in my affairs…and in how they are conveyed and misconstrued by others. I have had enough of friends and foes alike spreading false gossip—”

“Your reputation does precede you,” Theodosia says dryly.

Aaron smiles at her. “There you go again.”

Theodosia sets the letter down and puts her hands up. “I am listening.”

“You can always interrupt me, Theo.” Aaron drums his fingers on the desk. “Do you remember the text we discussed the other week—on the Protestant reformers—”

“Of course.”

“Anne Boleyn had the most compelling motto,” Aaron muses.

Theodosia bites her lip. “I assume I know the one to which you are referring. We cannot simply let them _grumble_ , Aaron.”

“How do you know that was what I meant?” Aaron leans across the desk and takes her hands. Theodosia doesn’t resist, but doesn’t return his grasp, looking at him with narrowed eyes and mouth. He runs his thumb down the lines of her palm, retaining her gaze. He wants to make her bite her lip again. “Perhaps I was referring to her other motto.”

“The most happy,” Theodosia murmurs. “Is that what you are?”

“Yes,” Aaron breathes out, wrapping his fingers around her wrist. He can feel her pulse faintly beneath his fingertips—as fast and fleeting as his. “Just to be near you. To watch you entertain, and best everyone in the room at word games. To talk with you, alone, and make you laugh.”

“And will you always be happy?” Theodosia says, sharper. “If you can never have more than that?”

Aaron shrugs. “I want what I can have. It is enough. _You_ are enough.”

Theodosia pulls her hands out of his. “And so—what? You are so _young_ , Aaron. You think nothing of it now, but you cannot waste all your good years for nothing—will you never marry? Sacrifice your future happiness—or stake it on—on—”

“Your becoming a widow?” Aaron says quietly.

Theodosia glares at him, eyes growing glassy, blinking fast. “How can you say that?”

“I always have to be honest with you.” Aaron folds his hands into his lap, feels them shaking. “The thought has crossed my mind.”

Theodosia closes her eyes, tilts her head downwards as though in prayer. “Mine too,” she says after a long minute.

Aaron exhales heavily, relief warring with distress at the misery in her admission.

“It’s awful,” Theodosia murmurs. “I feel _awful_. How can this—this isn’t how I want—”

“What _do_ you want?” Aaron asks—finally lets himself ask the question that has been on the tip of his tongue for months.

Theodosia breathes out, brushes away the wetness under her eyes. “What a question, Aaron.”

“I am utterly serious.”

“Easier to ask what I do not want.”

“We’ll start there, then.”

Theodosia props her chin on her elbows, covering her mouth. Her words come out muffled through her fingers. “I do not want a loveless, lonely marriage. But I do not want to be an unfaithful wife. I do not want to bring malicious whispers down on us from all corners, and damage your reputation. I know,” she says, holding up a hand as Aaron opens his mouth to object. “You would let them grumble. But you have always been too careless on this front, Aaron. And our concerns are not the same. I am a married woman, with children. I cannot afford the same scrutiny.”

Aaron nods, heart heavy as he absorbs the weight of her words.

“What I want…” Theodosia says as though considering a philosophical question. She huffs out a laugh. “More than what any woman considers possible, I suppose.”

“Say more,” Aaron urges her.

“So many of the things you and the other young men who pass through this house take for granted.” Theodosia leans back in her seat, speaks with her hands; Aaron follows their eloquent patterns, raptly attentive. “To be, as you say, challenged. Held to high standards of excellence, expected to know the canon of texts and languages that declaim one’s education. To speak your mind and have your thoughts recognized and rewarded—to speak _out_ of turn. To flirt with every pretty face in sight without a mind to the consequences. To act—so often do you all bandy about that phrase, a man of action—to _act_ , rather than sit and wait and wait, until you feel like you will just shrivel up from all the waiting. Wait to be schooled and wait for the schooling to end. Wait to be betrothed and wait to be gotten with child. Wait for your husband to come back from the war, wait for your home to be taken away, wait for others to come to your aid. Wait and hope, without end.”

Her words spill out swift and fervent, yet unfailingly articulate, not a one tripping over another. Aaron listens and listens, and remembers something said of his friend Colonel Hamilton’s courtship: _he is a gone man_.

Theodosia considers her last sentence, then nods, satisfied. “You asked what I want.”

“Let us compromise, then,” Aaron says.

Her eyebrows shoot upwards. “Oh?”

“I will not allow others to believe I am here courting Miss De Visme. You know my opinions on this kind of deceit. I will write to Bobby—you know he is an incorrigible gossip—and clarify the matter. He will set them straight.” Aaron takes her hands again, interlacing their fingers. “Here is _my_ proposal. I will wait for you. I want to share the burden of your waiting.”

“You will tire of it,” Theodosia says, but tightens her grip.

“No.”

“You will look elsewhere.”

“Never.”

Theodosia looks up from their joined fingers, gaze harder than he has ever seen it. Aaron braces himself for the final blow as her hands pull away from his. Before he can open his mouth, he feels a blunt tug on his cravat as Theodosia leans across the table to kiss him. He reaches up to cup her face by instinct, fingers catching in the soft strands loosened from the twist that holds her hair back. He’s imagined kissing Theodosia so many times—traced the line of her jaw and the hollows of her cheeks with his eyes—that it feels new and familiar at once, like following a map he’s already drawn.

“Come here,” she says against his mouth, and Aaron obliges, pushing his chair back and pulling her out of hers, barely breaking the kiss. She gasps as he lifts her by the waist and sets her down on the desk. “Aaron—the letters—”

“Fuck the letters,” Aaron mutters, moving his lips down her neck. “How they could think I was courting anyone other than you—it’s—” He loses his train of thought as Theodosia’s legs wrap around his waist. “I am _wholly_ yours.”

Theodosia lets out a moan as he presses a kiss to the underside of her jaw, and he grins, sucking harder at the skin. “No, you can’t—”

He pulls back after a few seconds, drawing a fingertip over the reddened area. “No marks,” he promises.

Theodosia smirks down at him. “Who’s interrupting now?”

Aaron puts his hands on the table, bracketing her hips between them. “It seems the tables have turned, my dear.”

Theodosia shivers as he walks his fingers up the sides of her waist. “I was going to say, you do not need to leave marks.”

“No?” Aaron pauses just below the shape of her breasts. He wants so badly to keep his hands moving upwards—so much more to learn about what she likes and reacts most strongly to, so much he has hardly let himself even imagine. “And why’s that?”

“Because you do not need to prove anything,” Theodosia says fiercely. “I am already yours. Wholly—” She breaks off as Aaron slides his hands up to cup her breasts, perfect and full under layers of silk and boning. “ _Aaron_ —”

He thinks he might come just from that—like a teenager—from the sound of his name in her mouth. Or die on the spot, because nothing this good could be happening to him. Maybe the heatstroke at Monmouth had been the end of him after all.

“What?” she says, brows pulling together. “What are you thinking about?”

Aaron shakes his head, feeling a stupid smile spread across his face. “Nothing important. What are _you_ thinking about?”

“I’m thinking…” Theodosia bites her lip again—there it is, Aaron thinks, delighted—as she fiddles with the front of his waistcoat. “I’m—too dressed.”

“We can change that.”

“I mean—it’s the middle of the day. The door isn’t even locked. It would take too long—and—” She blushes and presses a hand to her forehead, the most disarrayed and unsure he has ever seen her. “You would not be able to… _finish_ , inside of me. As much as I want—”

Aaron cuts her off with a kiss, because the rest of that sentence might actually kill him. “You do not need to worry about that. There are—ways, we can—without—” He finds himself stumbling, especially as Theodosia’s eyebrows rise. “But you’re right, it’s not the time for that. Or space,” he adds, glancing around the study. “It would be nice to have a bed.”

Theodosia laughs, cupping his flushed face in her hands. “Another day.”

“Another day,” Aaron vows, covering her hands with his and kissing her again. “I want us to take our time. I want to see all of you.”

Theodosia lets out a sound against his mouth that immediately makes him want to eat his words. “Soon. _Soon_. You cannot leave me like this.”

Aaron grins, threading his hand through her hair—now thoroughly disheveled—and giving it a quick, firm tug. “Oh, I can do so much worse.” She gasps and ruts against him, and he feels himself get impossibly harder at the revelation—tugs again with more force, and is rewarded with an even louder reaction. “Tonight, if you think you cannot wait.”

Theodosia considers, still moving her hips in almost idle motions against his. “We’ll have guests. We need to be discreet.”

“After, then.”

“After,” she agrees.

“Unless you simply cannot contain yourself for that long, in which case we could steal away—”

She laughs and swats his hands away from her hair. “You think _I_ am the one who lacks discipline? Ten shillings says _you_ break first.”

“ _Madame_ , there is no need to place bets on—”

“You will,” Theodosia murmurs against his lips, and Aaron thinks, _this woman is magic, and I am utterly bewitched_. “I will see you again tonight for dinner. And _you will break first_.” Low and warm in his ear, “If you make it through dessert, I may reward you.”

Aaron swears and kisses her again. “I will be on my best behavior.”

“Good soldier.”

“And I will _win_.”

“We’ll see about that.” Theodosia smiles at him, the smile to which he has become far too accustomed. How, he thinks again, could anyone believe it was the _sister_ — “Wait and hope,” she says. “That can be our motto.”

She slides off the desk and heads for the door of the study. “I’ll be wearing my best,” she says, pausing with one hand on the knob. “You should too. We shall meet on equal ground.”

“Challenge accepted,” Aaron calls after her. Theodosia’s answering laugh fills his ears and haunts the rest of his wasted afternoon.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Beyond" by Leon Bridges.


End file.
